Sean Scully

The Burden of Art Making

Regarding the choice of becoming an artist...Yeah, the most life affirming, that is a very good way of putting it. So my work is really based on a kind of idealism and romanticism with beauty and form and profundity all wrapped up.

On Beauty: If I am moved and engaged by something, I find  it beautiful. For the term beautiful is not pejorative, it is always affirmative. If I say I find it very convincing, even though it is ugly, the fact it is done with such authenticity and conviction and it is finally persuasive, it becomes beautiful.

"Whatever you is, be it." 

David Carrier on Scully in New Abstract Painting Exhibition NYC--

Sean Scully's work separates itself.  It has more in common with Richard Serra's weight and density of material than anything else in the exhibition.

"Any fool can count to ten, but drawing something into place with profundity is very difficult."

Scully draws and paints with "the humanity of imperfection...expression of fragility and fallibility".

--Sue Hubbard

Irish born (1945), London raised and educated, residing in New York, Barcelona and Munich, Sean Scully draws and paints simple rhythmical "bricks", arranged in mathematical and architectural structural grids.  The divisions are simple, the layers are many and visible; nothing is absolute, nothing is authoritarian.  The geometric centre is drawn with precision, rigidity and construction; the edges are soft; the bricklaying provides a "material feeling manifested in form and colour".

Scully. a self described "rugged individual", lists his inspirations as architectural structures like Stonehenge, artists ranging from Rothko, Van Gogh, de Kooning and Morandi, to specific landscapes and personal memories. 

"Painting is a humble, primitive act."